Posted on 09/27/2014 2:26:32 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
...A 10th century Arab Muslim writer named Ahmad ibn Fadlan produced a description of a funeral of a Scandinavian, Swedish, chieftain who was on an expedition on the eastern route. The account is a unique source on the ceremonies surrounding the Viking funeral, of a chieftain.
The dead chieftain was put in a temporary grave which was covered for ten days until they had sewn new clothes for him. One of his thrall women volunteered to join him in the afterlife and she was guarded day and night, being given a great amount of intoxicating drinks while she sang happily...
Meanwhile, the thrall girl went from one tent to the other and had sexual intercourse with the men. Every man told her “tell your master that I did this because of my love to him”. While in the afternoon, they moved the thrall girl to something that looked like a door frame, where she was lifted on the palms of the men three times. Every time, the girl told of what she saw. The first time, she saw her father and mother, the second time, she saw all her relatives, and the third time she saw her master in the afterworld. There, it was green and beautiful and together with him, she saw men and young boys. She saw that her master beckoned for her. By using intoxicating drinks, they thought to put the thrall girl in an ecstatic trance that made her psychic and through the symbolic action with the door frame, she would then see into the realm of the dead. The same ritual also appears in the Icelandic short story Völsa þáttr where two pagan Norwegian men lift the lady of the household over a door frame to help her look into the otherworld...
(Excerpt) Read more at thornews.com ...
You did. Crichton had an argument with a friend over whether or not Beowulf could still draw an audience. The resulting book was turned into a movie more than 25 years later: 13th Warrior. Essentially it is Beowulf as but based on the descriptions of vikings found in Fadlan. The book was originally called Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in A.D. 922:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaters_of_the_Dead
“Ernest Borgnine at his grooviest.”
E. B. as Shack — Emperor of the North.
Two hundred Quatloos for the newcomer!
Lo there do I see my father...
Or maybe the whole thing took place at a concert venue in Ireland, no one is sure.
Must be it happened in the 9th century then. :’)
I read it originally, hmm, sometime in the 1970s, in a book that *may* have been titled “Eyewitness to History”, otherwise “Witness to History”. Later I read a book with the opposite title, written by a multilingual diplomat present at the wartime Big Three conferences and whatnot.
She was asking for it.
The screenwriter would have to work in some girl on girl action.
yeah...right
Tony and Kirk
who cast them?
Tales of the Vikings intro.
exactly
The book was “Eaters Of The Dead”
Sorry. I am trying to do that after recently making the mistake of watching it.
Actually, he combined the two, although the events happened with several centuries separation in history.
I can see why a girl would volunteer for this. A Viking slave could look forward to a life of hard labor without a family. Here, she is feted for a week followed by one of the less painful ways to die.
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